Miami airport starting behavior recognition training

Miami airport starting behavior recognition training    Miami International Airport is starting a behavior recognition-based security training program that will eventually be offered to some 35,000 airport-related workers.
   According to a report in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, about 50 to 75 upper-level MIA administrators will begin receiving the four-hour training course on Thursday. The course is being taught by Miami-Dade County police officers that are from the county-run airport's incident containment team.
   The program is believed to the first of its kind in the U.S., and was designed by Washington, D.C.-based New Age Security Solutions, the report said. That company is headed by Rafi Ron, the former security director for Ben Gurion International Airport, near Tel Aviv, Israel.
   The program is based on the concept of recognizing unusual and potentially dangerous behavior. Those principles are widely used in Israel in an effort to spot potential terrorists.
   Although there have been calls to adopt similar training in the U.S., the concept is highly controversial because critics fear it would lead to unsubstantiated profiling.
   Airport spokesman Marc Henderson told the newspaper that the practice 'is not profiling. You're looking for patterns that would be out of the ordinary.'
   The program is being set up by the county and is independent of the Transportation Security Administration. Airport spokesman Greg Chin said 'The aim is to have as many eyes and ear in the airport as possible.'
   Training will be offered to all airport employees from janitors, skycaps and vendors, as well as non-county employees that work for airlines and support service companies.